If you've read both of these authors, you're probably wondering what they're doing here, sharing a title and a post like this. But as I was reading them, the other evening before bed, I was struck by a fundamental connection, in the way that I was read these novels (not
Joan Bauer's Squashed Putnam - Penguin, 1992 Ellie Morgan, sixteen years old, is our main character in Squashed: "A funny fast-paced book about an ordinary girl with an extraordinary ambition." That's what the New York Times Book Review says about the novel. And here's a taste of Ellie, as created by
Image Links to Challenge Site Margaret Peterson Haddix's Running out of Time (1995) Aladdin - Simon&Schuster, 1997 The Hunger Games meets "Little House on the Prairie" The Giver meets "The Truman Show" Yup, if I'd met Jessie Keyser in the pages of Running Out of Time when I
Virginia Hamilton's House of Dies Drear Illus. Eros Keith Macmillan, 1968 Hard to imagine a house with a more troubled past, historically speaking. For years I have confused Virginia Hamilton's award-winning novel with John Bellair's The House with the Clock in its Walls (which is also, by the way, a
Dick King-Smith's The School Mouse Illus. Cynthia Fisher Hyperion, 1995 The School Mouse is one of the books chosen by Shireen Dodson in her book 100 Books for Girls to Grow On, a list that I've been pulling from since 2008. It seemed the perfect choice for September: Back-to-School. And that's just what
